Sunday, February 5, 2017

A Spectacle of Horror

New York City, 1904

It was a beautiful Wednesday morning on June 15, 1904, when mothers and youngsters from Lower Manhattan’s Kleindeutschland (Little Germany) gathered at the pier adjacent to East River Park. They had arranged for a passenger steamer named the General Slocum to transport them to a picnic ground on Long Island’s North Shore. A thousand tickets were collected at the plank—a number that did not include 300 children under the age of ten. Soon after they departed however, as the ship passed 97th Street, the crew saw puffs of smoke rising through the wooden floorboards. When they tried to put out the blaze, the rotten fire hoses burst. One newspaper described it as “a spectacle of horror beyond words to express—a great vessel all in flames, sweeping forward in the sunlight, within sight of the crowded city, while her helpless, screaming hundreds were roasted alive or swallowed up in waves.” Most of the 1,021 people who died were women and children. A rare menu from the General Slocum, hauntingly dated to the day after the accident, recalls one of the worst disasters in American history. The National Association of Credit Men, then meeting at the tony Savoy Hotel, had planned to take an excursion on the General Slocum the following day. Not missing a beat, the organizers quickly chartered the steamer Rosedale for the scheduled outing to West Point. During their cruise up the Hudson, the conventioneers heard speeches about collecting delinquent accounts and discussed ways of punishing fraudulent debtors. The menu belowwas printed in advance for the General Slocum. Whether saved as a souvenir from the dinner on the Rosedale or as a token of the disaster, this menu endures as an unwitting memento mori, a poignant reminder of the fragility of life.

The scale of the catastrophe devastated the German-American neighborhood called Kleindeutschlandwhich was now dotted with desolate schoolyards. Many widowers and broken families moved uptown to Yorkville, closer to the spot in the East River where their loved ones had perished, hundreds of whom were never found. In 1906, a nine-foot marble stele was erected in Tompkins Square Park as a memorial. The inscription on it reads: “They were the Earth’s purest children, young and fair.”

Notes: 1. Gilbert King, Smithsonian.com, 21 February 2012 2. “Annual Convention of Credit Men at Hotel Savoy,”New York Times, 16 June 1904. 2. Thislargely forgotten accident has passed from living memory. The last surviving passenger, Adella Wotherspoon (née Liebenow), died in 2004 at the age of 100. At the time, she was a six-month-old infant, the youngest survivor of the disaster that took the lives of her two older sisters.

Welcome

Menus generally first appeared in the United States in the late 1830s. They came into being with the earliest hotels and restaurants, and at a time when service à la russe—the serving of dishes in courses rather than all at once—was growing in popularity. For the first time, diners were granted choice and anticipation.

Menus aid our cultural memory. They provide unwitting historical evidence—not only of what people were eating, but what they were doing and with whom they were doing it; who they were trying to be; and what they valued. Deciphering the story behind a particular menu often requires great sleuth-work. That’s what I'll be undertaking on this website.

My collection of menus illustrates American history and culture beginning from the mid-19th century. It contains bills of fare from a wide variety of venues, ranging from restaurants and hotels to private organizations, military units, steamships, and trains. From the start, the menu has been an art form. Some were beautifully crafted by printers or high-society stationers to celebrate special events. Others simply expressed the whimsy of everyday life.

Even when saved as personal souvenirs, menus were frequently discarded by subsequent generations for whom they had no special meaning. As with other types of ephemera, one aspect of their appeal lies within the notion of their improbable survival.

Viewing the Menus

Scroll over images for photo credits. Click on the picture to enlarge the image.

About Me

Collecting menus reflects my interest in history and culture, including the social and food customs of everyday life. I am a member of the Ephemera Society, Grolier Club, Library Company of Philadelphia, and Delaware Bibliophiles. You can contact me at Henry.B.Voigt [at] gmail.com